Edison Hark is one of the first Chinese-American police detectives, working the mean streets of 1930’s Honolulu, when he gets an urgent request from his surrogate brother to come home. Hark was “adopted” by a rich, white family after his mother, who worked for them as a maid, passed away. Now history threatens to repeat itself: The family patriarch has fallen into a coma, and the family’s maid, another Chinese-American, has gone missing. The case is further complicated by the appearance of Hui Long, a mythical boogieman who begins killing his way through the Asian criminal underworld.
As a man who stands in two worlds but lives in none, Hark is a fascinating character. The whites don’t trust him because he is Chinese, and the Chinese don’t trust him because “Who would give a badge to the Chinese?” as one woman tells him. Even the cops don’t trust Hark, instead using him as an undercover informant or to roust drug addicts from opium dens. He’s quiet, brooding, and self-loathing, made all the worse by living in a time when the U.S. Government has banned Chinese immigrants from entering the country.
The glimpses behind the scenes of a little-discussed piece of history were fascinating and probably my favorite part of the whole story. Author Pornsak Pichetshote wisely includes a historical supplement at the end, which provides more context for the time and places where the story is set. For a closeted history buff like myself, it was pure gold.
The mystery itself, however, I liked, but did not love.
The story takes a few strange dog legs into another character’s point of view. Both times this happens, it unfolds without warning and left me wondering if some pages were missing. Transitions are a useful narrative tool.
A bigger problem, though, is that the large cast of characters is hard to follow through the twists and turns of the plot. There’s quite a few names to juggle. This isn’t helped by artist Alexandre Tefenkgi’s simple and unadorned style, which makes a lot of characters—I really hate to say—look the same. It rather undercuts the drama when the story drops an important name or a character reveal and you are left asking, “Wait, who is that again?”
Despite these hangups, I had a good time wandering the streets with Edison Hark. The Good Asian is a nice slice of comic book noir that’ll also teach you a thing or two along the way. What more could you ask for? There’s also a tease in the back of the book that the character will return. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The book picked up an Eisner Award for best limited series and there’s rumblings afoot that a movie or TV adaptation might be on the way.
Count me in.
Joe Johnson Writer 